


A Cadence, Interrupted

by puckity



Category: Flight of the Conchords (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, M/M, Unrealized Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-22
Updated: 2008-01-22
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bret needs to go on, with or without Jemaine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cadence, Interrupted

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008; my first FotC fic. It came about mostly because of a chance late night re-viewing of "The Frighteners".
> 
> Beta'd by the resilient Rachel, who put aside her hatred of deathfics for this.
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/).

Jemaine died on a Tuesday. Bret thought that was rather appropriate, since he had always made a point of saying that Tuesdays were just less ambitious Mondays.

 _It’s like you couldn’t even make it to death on time._ Bret set out two cups before he thought to stop himself.

He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered at all, since Eugene’s latest attempt at fixing their oven had ended up breaking the hob instead. Jemaine suggested microwaving their teas after that, but what few tries they’d made had left a regrettably literal bad taste in their mouths. So they’d ended up substituting in that juice Dave had given them—he’d called it the Ancient Indian Lady Magnet. Well that wasn’t _exactly_ what he’d called it, only Bret never could quite get used to some of Dave’s word choices.

When they found themselves staring down at the oddly lumpy substance settling in the bottom of their mugs they must’ve both had second thoughts, because neither one ever made a move to actually taste it. Bret was fully convinced there’d be some bit of hallucinogenic drug in there, and there was no flippin’ way he was going to have another bad acid reflux trip. He hadn’t been able to stay calm near a squirrel in months.

Jemaine, on the other hand…Bret sort of suspected he hadn’t wanted to drink the juice for a completely different reason. It seemed like he was particularly nervous about the possibility of any _weird_ side effects it might have, being a love potion and all. He’d laugh a bit too loudly and say he didn’t need any help getting with the hot women, but Bret still caught him eyeing his mug with what looked like a fair amount of distrust and just a hint of desperation.

So they’d sit there awkwardly, tapping their fingers against the cheap porcelain, until the usual allotted time for evening tea was over. Then they’d dump the gluey liquid down the sink and Jemaine would mutter something about talking to Eugene tomorrow and making him get someone who knows what they’re doing to fix the stove (though they both knew that was an empty threat) before shuffling off to brush his teeth, leaving Bret behind to rinse out the cups. He’d stand there holding Jemaine’s _World’s Greatest Secretary_ mug in his hands, turning it slowly under the lukewarm water, and smile to himself when the slightly off-key humming rendition of "I Got You" finally began to waft out from the open bathroom.

One day that Bret can’t quite remember he realized that their life was like a song—it had a solid rhythm. A melody and a harmony with crescendos and rests and repeats. And it was full of key changes, since their bar scale seemed to constantly shift without telling them. But underneath all that was the beat, keeping them from descending into utter atonality.

Now Bret was sitting alone at their table, with one empty chair and two empty mugs, and he couldn’t help but hear his whole world slowly going flat around him.

_\---_

_When did I move this here?_ Bret picked up his lyrics pad and stared at it blankly. He didn’t remember putting it on Jemaine’s now permanently-unmade bed.

"Do you?" Distracted by his mysterious notebook, Bret only managed to catch the end of Murray’s question.

"Do I what?" He sandwiched the phone between his shoulder and his ear and tossed the magic bit of stationary onto his own neatly-folded blankets.

Murray sighed like he was trying to convincingly express exasperation. "I asked, do you need to take a sickie? I know it’s only been a week since..." He trailed off uncomfortably and Bret could hear him tapping out his rhythmless anxiety on his posh label company desk. It made him feel a bit better knowing that even though he was a big-time manager now, Murray still handled awkward situations like he had when it’d just been the Conchords and him. When there had been the Conchords. Both of them.

Bret forced himself to look anywhere that didn’t remind him of Jemaine. When that failed he shut his eyes and tried to blindly navigate his way out of their bedroom, pointedly ignoring the dull thud of his arm against the door jamb.

"No Murray, I don’t need a sickie. I’m fine." Even though he didn’t make a noise one way or another, Bret could tell that Murray was giving his professional blue-grey walls a gently unconvinced look. He took a deep breath and added for emphasis, "Really."

"Well, if you say so Bret." Murray paused and Bret knew he was trying to work up the nerve to say something he considered very important. "Bret, you know that if—if you need anything, I mean, if you feel like you can’t handle all this—" At a sudden sharp clattering and Bret’s muffled "Flip!" he cut off abruptly.

"Ah, sorry Murray." Bret looked down at the scattering of CDs across the living room floor; he was beginning to seriously consider the possibility that things moved in the flat when he wasn’t looking. "And thanks, but really. I’m fine. I mean, I’m not _fine_ —Jemaine is...gone. But I’m fine in that way that I’m not really fine but I’m fine enough. D’you know what I mean?"

"Er, yes." Clearly, Murray didn’t but he was willing to play along for his bereaved friend’s sake. "Alright then. Just—if you need me."

Bret murmured something and allowed Murray to believe it was a yes.

"Now, when are we going to have the next band meeting? I know I’ve been kind of tied up with the Crazy Dogggz lately, but I’ve been promising you guys Conchords time and I’m ready to deliver it." It was a strange thing, but suddenly Bret hated Murray’s other band more than Jemaine ever had.

"About that." Bret leaned against a bright window but didn’t look out. "I don’t really think we’re going to need band meetings anymore, Murray. I...I don’t really think there _is_ a band anymore. I mean, one person isn’t much of one anyway." There was a long pause that Bret knew was Murray trying to think of something proper to say.

"Ah, well..." Bret wished Murray would just make an excuse about new clients or a paper jam and hang up already. Sometimes he was too considerate for even Bret to deal with. If Jemaine were here, he’d grab the phone away and shout, "Get us a gig!" into the speaker before tossing it back with a dead dial tone. Bret hadn’t realized how much he needed him for awkward phone conversations until just now.

"You know, and this is just something to consider." Bret rolled his eyes a bit but didn’t make a move for the receiver. "You could start looking for a new band mate."

Bret’s throat felt like it dropped into his lungs. "What...Murray, what are you saying? You want me to replace Jemaine?"

"No!" Murray tried to hide it, but Bret could hear the panic in his voice. "Of course not. We could...no one could ever _replace_ Jemaine. I’m just saying, would Jemaine want the Conchords to end just because he...isn’t part of it anymore?"

Bret knew that was exactly what Jemaine would’ve wanted. "I’m not getting a new Conchord."

Murray sighed, and it almost sounded like pity. "Just think about it, won’t you?"

Bret stood silent for a moment, like he was on the edge of figuring something out. Before he would have given in, told Murray he’d think about it and actually do it too. Jemaine would have scoffed and hung up, without a goodbye or anything. Before they would have evened each other out. But now it was Bret who had to balance everything, for the both of them.

"Bye Murray." He grit his teeth at his own entrenched sense of politeness, then quickly hit the ‘End Call’ button and hurled the phone brutally into the couch cushions.

Still fuming, he tried to punch the wall or kick the furniture or do any of the other manly things grieving men were supposed to do. But all he could think of was having to explain a broken hand or foot and no insurance to the emergency room. All he could see was that stale, antiseptic waiting area and stretchers racing past with a dozen more Jemaines on them and him sitting there again, wondering bitterly why they’d gotten a week more than his Jemaine had.

\---

Bret used to dream of animals and colourful predicaments and once, for about a week, multiple artistic stages of David Bowie. Now when he does sleep he dreams of the flat, the bedroom—if he dreams at all. In the beginning he thinks it’s because even his subconscious must be unable to escape from this new reality.

It takes five nights before Bret notices that in the dream bedroom he isn’t alone. The first time he hears a faint snoring but doesn’t quite remember it. The next night he sits up in the dream bed and stares at the rising and falling lump of blankets tangled where Jemaine used to be. Finally, on the third night he gathers all his dream courage and pulls away the jumbled sheets, terrified of what may have taken residence in his best mate’s place.

He’s greeted with an aggravated grunt and Jemaine—or some eerie dream twin of Jemaine— roughly pulling the sheets back over himself. For a second, Bret wonders if people can have mental breakdowns in their sleep.

"Jemaine?" Bret whispers, mostly because he’s scared to touch him. Half because he might disappear if he does, and half because he might not.

"Mm?" The dream Jemaine, much like the real one, doesn’t even roll over.

"Jemaine, is that you?"

"Mm, of course it is. Who else would it be?" Bret isn’t sure he wants to think about that question too hard.

"Jemaine?" Bret reaches out and his fingers linger above a mess of black hair. "Can I touch you?"

At this dream Jemaine does roll over, but Bret only draws back slightly. In the strange dream moonlight—hazy and washed out, like the whole world has gone a bit nearsighted—Bret stares at those dark, shimmering eyes and can’t help himself. He slides down to the floor, knees hitting it with a hollow clunk, and lays his heavy head against that warm chest.

In the morning, Bret wakes up with a steady heartbeat in his ears.

\---

"It really sucks, man." Dave stood in the doorway, not making any move to come in. Bret wondered if maybe it had something to do with the Hindu superstitions that he was always telling them were bullshit. "I mean, really. It sucks. A lot."

"Yeah..." Bret moved out of the way and made a casual motion towards the general kitchen/living room area. "D’you—d’you wanna come in, Dave? I don’t have any tea but I think there’s some of your juice left."

"Nah, man. That stuff tastes like shit." Bret reminded himself to toss the rest of it out after he left. "I didn’t really come here to...chat...or anything. I mean, I got things to do, really important things for like, really important people and shit. I just wanted to, you know, come by and say how much it—"

"Sucks?" Bret nodded quietly. "It does."

"I mean, who would’ve guessed that he’d die like that. Jesus man, it’s fucked up, that’s what it is. One in a million chance." Dave seemed torn as to whether or not he could wipe at his eyes in front of Bret. Bret wanted to tell him that he didn’t mind, that he’d do it too if he could actually cry about all this. Instead he pretended like he didn’t see Dave hide his face under the pretense of a cough and dry off his cheeks with the back of his palm. His voice was muted behind his fist. "One in a million, shit."

The word Dave used—he was the first person to really _say_ it out loud—echoed in Bret’s head. He took a long breath and forced himself to repeat it. "Since Jemaine...died...I just, I’m not sure what to do. I’ve gone to a few job interviews and I talked to Eugene about the lease yesterday, but it—just, none of it seems right, you know?"

Dave didn’t know, and he wasn’t as good as Murray at pretending. So they stood there in the kind of silence that would never have happened if Jemaine were still alive.

"Hey man, I got to go." Dave was already inching down the hallway, not making direct eye contact with Bret. "I mean, come by and we can hang or whatever. No gay shit though. Just, like, if you need a wingman or a Jaeger buddy or something, I’m there. So I’ll—yeah. Later, bro." Bret’s own faint "bye" must have been lost on the bad building acoustics, because Dave didn’t stop or look back at him.

He stood there for a minute then let the door swing shut with a hard slam and turned towards the refrigerator, more than a little eager to finally get rid of the last of that lady juice. When he opened the door however, he found the shelves strangely vacant.

He searched around for the beige plastic canister, not that there was much of a point. The entire refrigerator contents consisted of an almost empty gallon of milk, a chilled water bottle, a half-eaten banana, some cheese that Greg had bought for them—he’d said it was from the National Dairy Fair in Pennsylvania—and an untouched ‘Just Because’ cake that Mel had given them a couple months ago. Though they both were fairly sure that she’d probably done something mildly illegal to it, it was really the frosted-on bikini photo of her that made them unable to eat it.

Unsuccessful with locating the juice in the refrigerator—and now determined to have the satisfaction of pouring the remaining brownish-black muck down the drain—Bret moved his search to the cupboards. Mismatched plates, their mugs, some oyster crackers that Jemaine had stolen from a soup café, dried pasta, stale biscuits, vanilla pudding cups, a set of broken guitar strings (What were these doing up here? Hadn’t Bret asked Jemaine to throw these out in the summer?), and their stash of take-out menus. But no juice. Bret was grumbling, both confused and vaguely annoyed, by the time he got to the last cabinet. He pulled it open and stopped short, letting his arm fall limply against his side.

A box of Bell sat there, staring innocently back at him. The whole thing was empty except for it. Bret blinked slow, then faster, waiting for it to evaporate back into the atmosphere or wherever it had come from. When it didn’t even so much as fade in and out, he picked it up and weighed it in his hands. It felt real enough, anyway. He fumbled to open it, struggling with the unnecessary shrink wrap it came in. After finally wrenching the staticy menace off he lifted the top flap and peered inside. Sure enough there they were, sixty bags of his favourite tea and no logical reason for them to be there.

Maybe...but no. Bret was sure that wasn’t the case. After all, Jemaine had been complaining about the tea shortage as much as he had and even if he’d gone and done something selfless like this—which he wouldn’t of, Bret knew—he still would have snuck a bag or two for himself. Jemaine hadn’t ever been one for self-control.

Bret continued mulling over the whole bizarre scenario as he put the kettle on, reaching automatically for both of their cups. He caught himself and paused, trying to make sense of this. Bret never was particularly good at riddles or proofs or any sort of thing that involved what his school counselors had called ‘complex problem-solving skills’. But he wanted to solve this one more than he’d ever wanted to solve anything else before and he thought he might as well give it a go. It wasn’t like he had something planned for the afternoon, anyway.

Half an hour later Bret was still solving it as he stood at the kitchen sink, washing out two mugs and humming a fully on-key version of "I Got You".

\---

"That looks really uncomfortable." Dream Jemaine mumbles into his pillow, his eyes not quite open. He stops, then starts again abruptly. "You can sleep up here, if you want."

Bret looks up, hoping to read Jemaine’s face, but the position from the floor is awkward and he’s pretty sure that the blankets shifted just enough to obscure his view.

"D’you mind?"

"I wouldn’t have asked if I minded, would I?" He sounds more flustered than irritated, and Bret decides he doesn’t want to push it. He crawls under the sheets that smell like a hundred missed opportunities but is careful to keep space between their bodies. It’s not that he doesn’t trust dream Jemaine so much as he doesn’t trust himself and he’s not really in a position to jeopardize the last thing he—they—have.

He lies in the darkness, letting the light catches of breathing and soft rustling of sheets fill his ears with melodies again. He’s so intent on listening that he doesn’t feel the body weight shifting until an arm lands squarely across his chest. Sputtering, Bret opens his eyes long enough to see his whole world roll horizontal until he is staring at the wall across the way instead of the ceiling. Jemaine secures a surprisingly protective arm around his waist and pulls him back into the warmth he only just realized he’s been craving.

Against the back of his neck, Jemaine’s breath tickles. "I don’t have a wig, sorry."

Bret sets off into a fit of giggles, but after a while they start to fall hollow in the dream air. So he concentrates on the weight and the heat and the breathing and the beating. He wishes he could wrap himself inside it forever.

He wakes up tangled in Jemaine’s blankets alone, only he’s sure that this morning they smell a bit less like regret than they did the night before.

\---

Bret couldn’t deny that he was genuinely shocked it took Mel a month to pop up uninvited at the flat again. Not that he missed her—he would never say he _missed_ her—but he didn’t take the fire ladder when he saw her in the stairwell.

"Heeeeey, Bret." Bret tried to maneuver around her on the cramped landing before answering.

"Hey Mel. I haven’t seen you in a while."

"Yeah, I know." She pressed against him, trying to stay on the same step. He cautiously wedged an elbow between them. "I was going to come sooner but...I didn’t know if I could handle it."

"Really?" Bret walked briskly down the hallway and occupied himself with finding his keys rather than looking at her. "I though it might be because you were getting into all the VIP happenings with the Crazy Dogggz."

Mel flopped dramatically against the peeling-paint wall and groaned in a particularly overwrought manner. "Those guys are being huge dicks. I mean, they get one Diamond single and suddenly they think they’re Barry Manilow. Well guess what? They are _not_ Barry Manilow. And they’re so ungrateful to their fans! You know, they wouldn’t even give me card access to their hotel suites? I’m telling you Bret, I’m glad you guys didn’t get famous. It would have totally ruined the Conchords." When Bret finally got the door unlocked Mel eagerly pushed past him. He followed her warily, and from a safe distance.

"I’m sure we wouldn’t be that bad." Bret added a bit sulkily, "If we’d gotten famous."

Mel waved a dismissive hand before dropping onto the couch. "Oh Bret, of course you would’ve. Fame changes people. The money, the attention, the drugs, the groupies. Well, maybe not Jemaine so much...but you would have gotten so many groupies. Young, nubile teenagers with stars in their eyes...just looking for that rock star touch..."

Bret jumped in, keen to distract her from where he was afraid this might be going. That and he was a little offended, for his best mate’s sake. "I’m sure Jemaine would’ve done just fine in the groupie department."

"Maybe." Mel looked skeptical. "Although, he does have some animal magnetism going for him. He could probably play off that dangerous vibe too, as long as he didn’t actually talk. Yeah, then I could see him getting some hot, anonymous backstage servicing."

"Mm. Well, like you said Mel. It’s kind of a moot point now." Bret didn’t like talking about Jemaine like he could just walk through the door at any moment, because he couldn’t. And he didn’t like thinking about the hypothetical backstage servicing he might’ve gotten either, but Bret was pretty sure that that was for another reason altogether.

"Yeah." Mel’s excitement wavered. "I can’t believe he’s really dead."

Bret froze for an instant. Then everything—the word, the tone, and the absolute, concrete, non-negotiable reality of it—hit him like a frigid tidal wave. For the longest second of his life, all Bret could do was stand there stunned and faintly trembling.

"Dead." Bret didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t stop himself. "He’s dead."

"Bret? Are you okay?" Mel was up off the couch and moving towards him, and she looked so genuinely worried that he almost told her. He almost let himself do it. But then he remembered that this was _Mel_ and she didn’t need another reason to be...well, Mel. Especially not when they were alone in the flat and there was a conspicuous lack of witnesses.

"Yeah." He made sure not to smile too brightly. "It’s still a shock to me sometimes, too. That’s all."

She put a comforting—but firm—hand on his arm and took a step closer. That familiar sensation of panic and defenselessness began to churn in the bottom of his stomach, and he knew he had to get rid of her. Quickly.

"Mel, would you mind..." He gently extracted himself from her grasp and fumbled towards the door. "I just, I think I need to be alone...right now." At her look of doubting, he added for good measure, "With what I have left of Jemaine."

She wavered for a second, before giving into her sentimental streak. "Sure. I’ll leave you two alone. But just promise me one thing, alright Bret?" He nodded appeasingly, primed to shut and latch the door before she had a chance to stall longer. "You’ll let me know if you need—"

"Anything. Yes, I definitely will Mel. And thank you for...everything."

"Yeah, you’re totally welcome Bret and I meant it that—" Bret made sure to wave until he couldn’t see her through the doorway sliver anymore. As he turned the deadbolt he heard her shout “Bye!” from down the hallway, and he repeated a "Bye, Mel!" through the locked door before walking weakly back into the kitchen.

He fell hard onto one of their second-hand chairs. Watching his hands shake above the table top, his own breathing suddenly sounded raw and gasping in his ears. Then from behind him, something creaked obnoxiously.

Momentarily diverted from his stuttering thoughts, Bret twisted around to find the stove door hanging open. Adding loose stove screws to his list for Eugene, he pushed it closed and turned back to the empty table. But barely a minute later, it creaked again.

Getting irritated, Bret spun around in his chair to glare at the now even more-defective appliance. But this time, rather than just staying open the door was bobbing up and down lightly—which was jarring, to say the least—and after watching it go for a bit Bret had to tell his rigid body to relax.

 _It’s just a draft, or poor craftsmanship._ Bret reminded himself that the flat was full of a hundred things that could rationally explain this away. But when he reached for the handle, he felt an inexplicable urge prickle through his arm.

"Hello, Bret." He mumbled, though his voice wasn’t deep enough and really it was Jemaine who did funny impressions and not him. "Been feeling sad lately?"

Bret nodded glumly.

"Me too. But you know what I bet will make us both feel better? Making some delicious pizza! You can put eggplant-skin glasses on it if you’d like."

"I don’t know..." Bret trailed off uneasily, not really sure if he wanted to eat something with Jemaine’s face on it so soon. Then his fingers flexed around the cold steel and he realized that he was talking to a stove. A broken stove, at that. Humiliated and a little hungry now, he sunk his head into his folded arms and forced himself to listen to the void that had swallowed his world.

For a while it was just faint voices from the street, the neighborhood’s tellie, and Bret’s own chaotic heartbeat, thumping against his skull. But then, for just a moment, he was sure he heard somebody laughing. Not mockingly either, like he expected. Just...happy.

Bret closed his eyes and desperately chased that laughter into the soundless darkness.

\---

"I miss you too." Dream Jemaine whispers it against Bret’s cheek, but Bret doesn’t know why because he’s pretty sure he didn’t say anything to prompt that.

"Hm?" A pause.

"I’m not saying it again." Bret can feel Jemaine shrinking back from him, pulling at the too-short afghan and preparing to do what he always does when he’s self-conscious—hide and pretend like nothing happened in the first place. Bret shifts so they’re face to face, because he knows Jemaine can’t hide if someone is looking directly at him.

"What?" The blankets are bunched around Jemaine’s mouth, muffling his voice. His eyes dart anywhere but Bret’s face. "I thought you were asleep."

"This is a dream." Jemaine blinks bewilderedly and Bret wonders why in his dreams Jemaine still wears his glasses, even in bed. "I don’t think you can sleep in dreams."

"Can’t you? I mean, why couldn’t you?"

"I don’t know," Bret admits with a bit of reluctance. "It would be an awfully boring dream if you did, anyway." Jemaine seems to accept this, so he quickly adds, "I wasn’t asleep, though."

"Oh." Another pause.

"Yeah." Bret is suddenly sleepy, exhausted really, his eyelids falling heavy and opening slow. And somewhere deep within his chest a horrible idea rises—what if the next time he opens his eyes, Jemaine is gone? Bret can’t keep the alarm from creeping into his face.

Jemaine is looking at him now, eyebrows furrowed and jaw set like he’s truly concerned and that’s when the crazy thought pops into Bret’s head. He’s never considered it before, although he knows that—if he’s being completely honest with himself—that isn’t true. It’s been nagging him since the day he got the call from the hospital. No, before that. It’s always been there, just flitting around in the back of his mind. But that call changed it.

A gruff woman barked the words over the phone wires: _bike_ , _ice_ , _spinal injury_ , _critical condition_. When Bret asked her how she knew to call him, she clipped that there’d been a card in Jemaine’s wallet. Bret knows that if he turns over and opens the nightstand drawer now he’ll see that same old leather wallet, along with Jemaine’s cracked glasses and sloppy lyrics pad. Instead he stares at those dark eyes, watching him from behind a pair of still-intact frames—no broken earpiece or shattered left lens—and it’s nearly too much. He looks away.

He counts the fabric wrinkles on Jemaine’s pillow, pale in the dream haze. He wonders how many nights he had to do this, how many nights he wasted sleeping and dreaming of otters with his face on them. Too many, he decides, and now he has none.

It isn’t until after he’s pressed his lips awkwardly against Jemaine’s that he realizes all he’s really doing is kissing some unconscious manifestation of his dead best mate in his unaware, slumbering mind. He thinks this should probably worry him more than it does, then tosses the whole argument out because really, now is not the time to be splitting hairs.

Aside from being a bit colder than he expected, the sensation is actually…nice. Good. Normal. In fact, it’s the most normal he’s felt in weeks.

Dream Jemaine seems vaguely startled at first, but responds much quicker than Bret thinks the real Jemaine would’ve. He doesn’t pull away or question it or shove Bret off the bed. He just leans forward and moves his lips enough to make it a joint effort, while tenderly touching Bret’s hands clenched tightly between them. And when Bret finally finishes Jemaine stays where he is, a soft smile glistening off his mouth and his long fingers intertwining with Bret’s.

Bret has the overwhelming need to do a thousand things at once. Burst into laughter, run back to his own bed, kiss Jemaine again, apologize profusely. But all he can do is feel the warmth draining swiftly out of his dream world. When he does something at last, because he’s sure that everything will evaporate if he doesn’t, it’s nothing more than a murmur into the night.

"I think I loved you." As soon as he says it the room dims, but he can still see Jemaine’s smile. All the heat dissolving around him seems to have concentrated back on his cheeks, and he begins to recognize the almost forgotten memory of crying. Dream Jemaine pulls him in, and even though the warmth is gone Bret still burrows himself there and lets the tears be heat enough for both of them.

"I know." Bret can barely hear him over his own pitifully loud sobs. He’d stop if he could only he knows he can’t and oddly enough Jemaine doesn’t seem to mind. He supposes that this is just one of those things that best mates do, even in each other’s subconsciouses.

When he finally calms himself down to soft hiccupping sniffles, he realizes that Jemaine never really gave him a proper answer. Without moving, since he’s not sure he could say it if he was actually looking at him, Bret asks in faltering tones, "Well, what about you?"

Jemaine sounds unruffled. "What about me?"

"I just kind of made a pretty big confession to you, mate." Bret can’t help but be a bit annoyed by his composure, although that may be mostly because of residual embarrassment. "I mean, do you—er, did you...love me?"

There’s a long silence, and for a second Bret thinks that maybe Jemaine actually fell asleep. Then he hears it. It sounds like a sigh, but he isn’t certain.

"It doesn’t matter." Bret is about to jump in and say that yes it does matter it matters a lot in fact, but for some reason he doesn’t. Instead he feels Jemaine’s hand running idly through his hair and hears their tension buzzing in his ears and waits for the rest of it because something tells him that that’s going to be the important part.

It takes Jemaine a little while to actually finish though, and Bret gets the distinct feeling that he wishes he didn’t have anything else to say. Bret listens to his heartbeat diminish and shivers against the chill of his skin as it seeps through his pajamas.

"It’s just a dream, Bret." His chest shudders underneath Bret’s fingertips. "And you’re gonna have to wake up soon."

Bret wants to hit him. He wants to argue and deny and cling to this last bit of them until _he’s_ ready to let it go. He wants to cry again and hear Jemaine say, just once, that he loved him. But it’s so cold and Bret is so tired and he can still hear the beat, steady and strong, resonating in his bones. Even as the whole world fades to black it’s still there, marching him home.

\---

Bret woke up to sore eyes and wet cheeks, still moist against Jemaine’s crumpled pillowcase. He lay there not ready to move yet, the chatter of the city birds drifting in above him.

Closing his eyes to the dazzling sunlight, Bret took a deep breath and smiled. For the first time in a long time, they sounded like music to him.


End file.
